The best answer I’ve seen is in this video from George Gammon.
https://youtu.be/MfX_GXPEUBQ
The whole video is a good overview of Marxist economic and political theory, but jump to 23:10 to get the portion specifically about China, from Jeff Snider.
China is, and has been, communist since Mao. They changed tactics after the fall of the USSR in order to (in their view) make their communist state last. We in the west didn’t understand their apparent capitalism was a state-run transition phase. We saw it, mistakenly, as a rejection of communism.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/occupy-protests-plagued-by-reports-of-sex-attacks-violent-crime
https://abcnews.go.com/us/sexual-assaults-occupy-wall-street-camps/story?id=14873014
unless you don’t consider sexual assaults crimes
The local news station and several insiders on the police force reported a variation on the protest/loot/burn/destroy pattern seen recently.
Where as the police last time were admonished to stand back and for God’s sake don’t hurt anybody, yesterday their instructions were different: Don’t let them destroy the stores and properties.
Something changed and the people of Charleston decided that they did not like having their stores burnt down.
Protesters were smaller in number, about 100, and were outnumbered by police. Police did not let protestors walk in the streets, only on the side-walks. Arrests started immediately when protesters blocked traffic. The whole thing was shut down and people sent home. It sounds like the riot control techniques were pretty effective–isolating small groups and arresting them, turning the mob towards other streets, releasing people in groups of 2s and 3s to go to their cars and leave.
I’m a simple guy; I’m going to vote against the group lighting fires to stores, and beating people up in the streets, who tell us they want the police defunded. You know, the gang wearing all black, and acting a whole lot like storm troopers, ruling by fear. They say they are ‘anti-fascist’, but they act exactly like Stormtroopers - Team Hitler.
So if someone condemns Antifa, I’m voting for them. If someone fails to condemn Antifa, I’m voting against them. That’s pretty much it.
Antifa = Nazi Stormtroopers. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck - its a duck.
What Richard Wolff is promoting is growing an alternative sector of the economy consisting of Democratic Worker Coops, or as he calls them, Worker Self Directed Enterprises. He is not talking about capturing the government and forcing changes upon existing enterprises, or preventing anyone from starting a capitalist-structured business. While I may not agree with him on everything, he is doing a great service in waking people up to the inherent problems of capitalist structures and pointing to an alternative that can be grown from the bottom up. And these types of enterprises already exist in many places all over the world. So it is not some theoretical proposal.
As far as the rather blunt terms and phrases I use to describe those claiming that people engaged in protests against the ongoing violent racism perpetuated by some police officers and others is somehow “marxist” or “communist”, that is just being damn honest. Come on, this is representative of the ridiculously simplistic, idiotic thinking that allowed Trump to become president in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, most all Democraps nowadays have drifted so far from being concerned about the working people of this country, small businesses, and the 90% in general, that I find myself now having to decide which candidate is the lesser of two evils every four years. But what has happened to the Repugnantcan party over the last few decades is truly frightening, and Trump and his supporters are the latest and most extreme example of this far right move which relies on racism and fear to maintain support. So it seems quite easy for those who do not want to learn about the continuing problems with our economy and racism to just equate BLM with “Marxism”. And that is just plain stupid.
This is how the Marxists work. They proclaim that they are fighting against some form of oppression, such as Fascism or Racism or both as we see today. If you oppose them, they declare that you must be a Fascist or a Racist or both as we also see today. Then they send out their supporters to declare that no, this isn’t Marxist at all. Then they proclaim that their opponents are ignorant of what real Marxism is, following by a distracting “what-about-ism”.
Tim Pool reported on these persons during Occupy Wall Street. He says at one point, his tent with “Tim Pool” prominently marked in large letters, was stolen. He tracked the tent down and was told that it had been given to the current owners by the leader of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Speaking with the leader, he found this to be true and that the leader had confiscated the tent to redistribute to other persons in need, specifically that leader’s friends. That is what Marxists want. They want to take the property of others and redistribute it to themselves and their supporters. If they cannot do that, then they will spread destruction and fear until society capitulates to their demands.
Dave, with all due respect, I’ve followed you long enough around here to know you are not a simple guy.
Here is a template for what I see in many of the posts above:
"I see one side (or the other) doing these bad things. (present evidence: true, exaggerated, not true or a mix). I hereby label them as (pick bad name). I throw my support to the other side that opposes them (usually with no questions asked)."IMHO, this is exactly the kind of black or white bipolar thinking that I see as one of the major roots of the dangerous and growing divide I see out there. Isn't the universe (and human society) a complex and nuanced place with multiple variables that interact in unpredictable ways? This kind of thinking narrows it down to a single line that measures "leftness and rightness" and then strips out the middle ground leaving only the two extreme endpoints. This kind of thinking can bring nothing but trouble. And finally, even if the world has divided this way and even if one side appears very bad to you because of your own personal constitution, that absolutely does not mean the other side is good even if they oppose the side you see as bad. Can we get some nuance and complexity into this discussion, please? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iCCkhhf6uA
Don’t know how you Bar-B-Q where you come from. Around here we use propane tanks attached to a grill for cooking food. So why would you need that much gasoline for a small generator for lights? As for the “illegal” commercial fireworks they found, here for your review is a bodycam video of police under attack in Seattle:
https://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2020/08/17/officers-injured-18-arrested-during-riot-in-sodo/
Food trucks that are going to be preparing food over several days need significant electricity for refrigeration and to a lesser extent other uses (lighting, electric kitchen tools). It would be interesting to see just what electrical equipment was in the food truck and how much power/gasoline it required compared to how much they had as well as the size of the generators relative to the amount of gasoline.
As for the fireworks, that sounds more suspicious. Of course, knowing how big they were and how many they had would tell us more.
Some of them have been successful and some have not. Personally, I have long thought the idea had some merit. In fact, one of the last places my father worked at tried to go that route. However, it was unsuccessful for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless, if they are a viable idea in the long term, they should proliferate and spread. So far though, that has not happened to any large extent. But one can remain hopeful.
I do have a problem with ideological subversion tactics and strategies which are what BLM and Antifa are largely propagating, whether the majority of its members are aware of it or not (and perhaps functioning unknowingly as the classic “useful idiots”). It’s interesting that now, when you look into the backgrounds of the 3 founders of BLM, their Marxist beliefs and declarations have largely been scrubbed from the media most commonly read by the public. Hmm … isn’t that curious? So now they are apparently hiding what they freely spoke and wrote about not too long ago. The reason for that change is not difficult to discern.
If you’ve looked into ideological subversion, it should be clear to you that the agendas of BLM and Antifa fit it to a ‘T’. If subversion is not at the core of what they are doing, doesn’t it seem to be a remarkable coincidence? However, I’ve long found confirmation of the statement made by the CIA that, in such matters, “There are NO coincidences”.
Here’s another interesting coincidence. A majority of the leaders of the black civil rights movement of the 1960s were church leaders who were operating out of a moral imperative that they felt came from God. In stark contrast, the BLM movement of 2020 is vocally anti-God and, in fact, certain members of both BLM and Antifa have actually desecrated houses of worship and religious symbols. Please tell me what that violent and destructive anti-God stance has to do with fighting against racism, unjustified police violence, etc.
I agree with you that both American political parties have drifted from what they were at one time. I also agree that being forced to choose the lesser of two evils is not much of a choice. But I do know the fingerprints of Marxism when I see them and I can assure you that my thinking on this matter is neither simplistic nor idiotic nor stupid.
By the way, if you want to get past the widely embraced but simplistic thinking on racism, watch the 1:03:54 long video by the Sandia National Labs electrical engineer, Casey Peterson, on critical race theory and his data driven conclusions.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/sandia-labs-goes-nuclear-employee-who-sparked-internal-revolt-over-critical-race-theory
The question is, do people just want to go by emotionally driven popular but specious opinions and beliefs on the issue or are they willing to put in the time and effort to do the hard mental work and look at actual facts and data on the issue that are largely at odds with the politically correct but false prevailing narrative.
I agree that there is strong evidence that they both have Marxist aims that individual members may or may not be aware of or aligned with.
There is another issue: BLM and Antifa seem to have attracted a fairly large following who have neither found a place within, nor feel warm and fuzzy about the mainstream of America. Why? Are there real problems there? If so, how long have these problems been around? How are they impacted by them? What has driven them to join such a radical aggressive and even violent movement? Of course, some of the same questions could be asked about the far right as well.
And from a larger picture, why extremism now? What has gone wrong?
I think we all might have similar thoughts on these questions. I also think they have gotten lost in the fray of choosing sides.
I’ll just articulate the questions from now. Maybe later, I’ll detail what I’ve heard from some younger friends who are aligned to greater or lesser degrees with the peaceful side of this movement and I’ll elaborate on what parts of their opinions I agree with and to what extent.
“I think we can acknowledge that things are changing, and that the old definitions don’t need to apply. China is communist, but also capitalist. That doesn’t work, does it? Marx himself was funded by rich friends, so actually, it makes perfect sense.”
The U.S., China and Russia are crony capitalist fascist countries. Russia gave up it’s totalitarian form of ‘communism’ and suffered intense neo-liberal abuse, as a result. Their oligarchs were born out of that wreckage. They now have more open markets but operate within a totalitarian structure.
China played a long game, gave up communism, merged key industries with government but did not give up totalitarianism. The perfect merging of state with an open economy under a dictatorship is textbook fascism.
The republicans, through Trump, amassed terrific control through the use of social media, early on. They had the jump on the neo-liberals in that realm and appealed to rightful indignation of the underclass and the greed of the super wealthy to great effect. Steve Bannon, Cambridge Analytica, etc…They have relied on atrocity propaganda, the same type that ushered Jews into gas chambers. They ramped up fear of rampant pedophila, Hillary’s abuse of children. Why, they even played the cannibal card, with ‘evidence’ that Podesta, an Obama official, engaged in blood rituals and human sacrifice. This is identical to the historical ‘blood libel’ nonsense that tarred Jews, for centuries, in Europe.
I can’t even believe I am writing this, in the modern era, it is so profoundly ridiculous. But, there you go. The alt right is helping the neo-cons double down on fascism and it is very likely to take the form of a theocratic state. This isn’t about freedom, it is about subterfuge, articulating the inarticulate in the minds of the dispossessed. It’s what populists do. That’s how they get in. By the time their adherents realize they have been snookered, it’s too late. They have a lock on power. What is crucial is that they have a significant faction of the military behind them and local police forces. Sound familiar?
IMHO, this is exactly the kind of black or white bipolar thinking that I see as one of the major roots of the dangerous and growing divide I see out there. Isn’t the universe (and human society) a complex and nuanced place with multiple variables that interact in unpredictable ways? This kind of thinking narrows it down to a single line that measures “leftness and rightness” and then strips out the middle ground leaving only the two extreme endpoints. This kind of thinking can bring nothing but trouble.
And finally, even if the world has divided this way and even if one side appears very bad to you because of your own personal constitution, that absolutely does not mean the other side is good even if they oppose the side you see as bad.
Can we get some nuance and complexity into this discussion, please?
People will reliably revert to fundamentalist thinking when they feel threatened. Human nature can be manipulated in any number of ways in times like these. Black and white thinking has survival advantage when you have to do a rapid threat assessment of what might harm you. It’s best and will preserve your own sanity to understand that when people are this stressed out, they will not be able think clearly. In other words, speak your mind but don’t expect to get far.
A whole bunch of my friends are Democrats. I used to be one too. To a greater or lesser extent, they tacitly support Antifa. That’s where they just lose me. Some force has whipped them into a frenzy over Trump. This force desperately wanted HRC in 2016, and it has never been able to overcome the electoral loss to the Bad Orange Man.
From the 50,000 foot view, I wonder: why can’t we just have an election and accept the results without violence? The nation will survive Trump, like it survived Obama, and Bush II, and Clinton, and Bush I, and even Reagan.
But for some reason, this force finds this to be unacceptable.
Try on this thought experiment. Imagine for a moment, large groups of white people in red MAGA hats and shirts and gear, setting up checkpoints, forcing people to say the right slogans, beating them up if they don’t, killing one every now and then to underline the point, looting stores, burning down buildings, all the while demanding that we defund the police - presumably, so mob rule would become that much easier.
This environment would look a whole lot like Nazi Germany in 1932. These would be red-shirted red-hatted fascists, because that’s how fascism operates - through organized violence and intimidation, and ultimately, by killing people who disagree with their plan.
If I saw Team Trump doing that, I’d want the police to come and throw them all in prison. That’s because they would be acting like fascists. Like Nazis. Like the KKK. Like every evil organization in the world that we all loathe.
Of course, Team Trump isn’t doing that. It’s Antifa and BLM that are using organized violence and intimidation, winked at and tacitly supported by the Democrats, as the “enforcement arm” of the party - kept at arms length, of course. But the understood theme is, “Trump is a bad man, and so we all secretly like it when Antifa or BLM beats up or even kills someone wearing a MAGA hat.” After all, “Trump is a racist.” Even though he apparently has a number of very loyal black friends. Impossible to prove a negative, of course. If I call you a racist, how exactly do you prove you aren’t one?
And so that’s where we are. No way I support this effort. This is black and white to me. I feel like I have seen this game play out before - in 1932 Germany - and I will oppose it happening in America in 2020 with everything I’ve got.
Some evil force has hijacked Team Blue. I can’t point at individuals - I mean, maybe HRC is in there somewhere - but I can see the general thrust of things, and it has an evil core at its center that is manifesting in organized violence and intimidation very reminiscent of what the Jews had to endure in Germany in 1932.
Team Blue needs to lose this election, so they stop pulling this crap and winking at the violence. Violence cannot be rewarded. If it is rewarded, it will become normalized and grow in strength the next time around.
Maybe after such a loss, it would allow a reasonable candidate to appear - I liked Tulsi Gabbard a whole lot - who I could enthusiastically support.
[And for the record I’m for national healthcare, stopping endless war, higher wages for US workers, amnesty for snowden, dismantling the “war on terror” machine starting with the NSA, busting the monopolies & trusts - all the stuff the “old-timey” Democrats used to be for, but don’t seem to care about any longer.]
But in 2020, it really is black and white. For me anyways.
That’s interesting Dave. You see the left as the facsist/descent into darkness and violence risk, but not the right. I see them both that way. I’d love for you to read this article that portrays Trump as a fascist and debunk it for me. I can see at least some exaggeration in there, but some of it rings true to me. Maybe I’m falling victim to some subtle game that reaches into my long-ago liberal roots.
And we think we’re so advanced and sophisticated.
If I call you a racist, how exactly do you prove you aren't one?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2xlQaimsGg
QB-
Trump tweets a lot. They don’t like that, because he’s able to get around the media and talk directly to his base. They also didn’t like his convention. He is always violating one convention or other. “He looks like a tinpot dictator.” He probably tweets like one too. He may talk about a Trump Army. Just what is the Trump Army doing? I don’t see one in action. I suspect CNN would cover it 24/7 if one appeared.
Remember his “racist” travel ban? Got overruled by the Supremes. Sometimes he wins, sometimes he loses. Is that Hitler? I studied the period. It never happened to Hitler. “OMG he used the White House as a campaign platform!” Yep. Hitler for sure. Just one step removed from setting up concentration camps.
Trump dispatching federal police to protect federal buildings? That’s bad too. The locals would apparently prefer the federal buildings to be burned down, hopefully with the federal workers inside, so that Trump looks bad (and/or powerless) and loses in 2020. Right after they defund their own police. While keeping their own public-funded armed security teams. If I lived in that city, I’d be furious at my safety being sacrificed on the altar of the 2020 campaign, while the weasels at the top continue to get armed police protection.
On the other side, you have large organized groups of people using actual intimidation and violence on a scale that far surpasses the cases brought up - that one protest in Michigan (with no masks or social distancing!) and some pretty obnoxious tweets - vs the months of BLM protests which resulted in the actual looting and burning of mom & pop stores across America, hundreds of injured cops, and hundreds of dead civilians.
Body-count-wise and property-destruction-wise, who wins? BLM/Antifa, hands down. Just do the math.
MAGA hat wearers run boat parades. BLM/Antifa? They are establishing checkpoints, terrorizing anyone who won’t say the right things, threatening mob violence against attendees of the RNC, beating up or killing people who wear the wrong hats. It turns out, scale really matters. And BLM and Antifa are totally winning the “scale” war. It is lop-sided, because the violence is being winked at by Team Blue leadership, and well funded by … somebody.
I am not surprised that armed Trump supporters are finally appearing after months and months of organized BLM/Antifa violence. But a violent reaction to a sustained campaign of organized violence does not equate to fascism. In western legal thought, “who started it” really does matter. It separates self defense from manslaughter and murder.
Doesn’t it strike you as odd that “the fascists” (wearing the wrong hats) are the ones being beaten up and killed? And that’s ok. The guy wore the wrong hat. Just like that kid from that Catholic school. The nerve of him, wearing that hat. And standing there.
I’m still a Democrat. I really do line up more with them - where they used to be anyway - I just wish the party would wake up and become reasonable again.
Without getting into the weeds of your discussion, I have an observation. I think we are all programmed Beyond our rational understanding by the media we watch.
I am building a house for a very intelligent and wealthy man who has worked at high levels of government in Pennsylvania and Texas. He is a fiscal conservative and disagrees with 90% of the democratic platform. He also hates trump with a passion. Although being intelligent he takes newscasts at face value (he watches NBC) every night. He often tells me stuff that is factually inaccurate and clearly has left spin on it. I don’t rebut his politics but interject facts whenever possible.
It amazes me how the same factual event can be portrayed in polar opposite frames. I think honest people on both sides of the aisle are being lied to By the media and that We are probably less divided than we think.
While she calls it being a “trained organizer”, by looking at the end product, it sure looks more like training for organized violence and intimidation to me.
https://nypost.com/2020/06/25/blm-co-founder-describes-herself-as-trained-marxist/ “The first thing, I think, is that we actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers,” she said, referring to BLM co-founder Alicia Garza. “We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories. And I think that what we really tried to do is build a movement that could be utilized by many, many black folk,” Cullors added in the interview with Jared Ball of The Real News Network.